Universe: This is a
cross between Forever Knight and the movie Subspecies

Disclaimer: I do not
own anything from either the Forever Knight television show or the
Subspecies movies.

Warnings: I am taking
liberties with both the Forever Knight universe and the Subspecies
universe, mostly in adjusting them to work together. I do not care
for the ending of the Subspecies movie, so ignore the last scene and
that Michelle was bitten. In this version Radu did die and Michelle
was rescued before Radu bit her.

Rating: T/PG 13

Prologue

As Michelle sat
watching the bonfire that she had helped Karl to build burning the
bodies of her two best friends the events of the last few days
flitted through her mind. She had been thrilled to hear from Mara,
her roommate from her undergraduate days informing her that she had
managed to get permission for her and Lillian to come to Romania to
the village of Prejnar. Prejnar was where a monastery still stood
that had been the site of a mysterious defeat of an army of Turks
centuries previous. The local legends claimed that the King of the
Vampires, Vlad, had led his people to the army and decimated it in
one night of feasting.

The next morning a
volunteer from among the survivors of the Turk invasion crept out of
the monastery to go for help only to find that all of the Turks were
dead with bloody throats. As mythology students Michelle and Lillian
had been thrilled to be allowed to come and research in the monastery
library. What little Michele had read on the subject got very murky
at that point but Vlad and his court ended up with the local castle
to call their own and a gypsy had given the King a relic he had
stolen from the Vatican in Rome, the Bloodstone which dripped the
blood of all the Saints. By drinking from the Bloodstone a vampire
did not have to hunt humans for their survival. Peace had come to
the village. Not only were they never invaded again by an army, but
they were never attacked by a vampire again; at least, not until the
last few nights.

She, Mara and Lillian
had been looking for information for their Ph.D.'s; instead they
got caught up in the war between King Vlad's two sons. Radu, the
eldest, had arrived the night before they had and in a fit of madness
had murdered the king, his father. The younger son, Stephan, had
come home to find the king dead and Radu in possession of the
Bloodstone. Stephan had gone to his friend Karl, the caretaker of
the monastery, for help. He hadn't expected to find Michele and
her friends, nor had he expected to find that Radu was stalking them.
It wasn't until Michele had been directly confronted with Radu
that she demanded that Stephan tell her what was going on because
Radu couldn't pass as human.

The fact that vampires
were real (and that the man she had fallen in love with was one) had
been the hardest thing for her to accept. The idea that some were
good and some were evil was actually easier. Michele brushed her
short dark hair out of her eyes. Radu had brought both Mara and
Lillian across, that is, he made them vampires. He had also killed
the old storyteller woman of the village because she was trying to
get rid of them for their safety and the safety of the village and
another villager she didn't know. He had nearly bitten her, but
Stephan and Karl had arrived just in time. While Stephan had taken
on Radu in a sword fight and won, Karl had killed Mara and Lillian.
And now as the sun climbed high in the sky, she was watching her
friend's bodies' burn.

She had a decision to
make. Could she stay with Stephan and be to him what his mother had
been to his father? Stephan had told her that his mother had been a
mortal woman who had lived out her life among the vampires. Michele
didn't think that it would be too bad a life to be Stephan's
wife. Even after all of this, she was still very much in love with
the handsome, gentle vampire, but what about her doctorate? And what
about Mara and Lillian? Someone had to deal with the details, like
informing their families that they were dead. What was she going to
do?

Karl sat down next to
Michele. "I will take care of informing the girls' families and
dealing with the formalities that the government requires. What will
you do now?"

"I don't know."

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